Rationality Quotes: June 2011

Just because you two are arguing, doesn't mean one of you is right.

Maurog: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14222

The megalomania of the genes does not mean that benevolence and cooperation cannot evolve, any more than the law of gravity proves that flight cannot evolve. It means only that benevolence, like flight, is a special state of affairs in need of an explanation, not something that just happens.

• Pinker, The Blank Slate

A little long, but I don't see the possibility of a good cut:

“Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio Forel the best? I will tell you now.” He touched the tip of his little finger lightly to his eyelid. “The seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of it.

“Hear me. The ships of Braavos sail as far as the winds blow, to lands strange and wonderful, and when they return their captains fetch queer animals to the Sealord’s menagerie. Such animals as you have never seen, striped horses, great spotted things with necks as long as stilts, hairy mouse-pigs as big as cows, stinging manticores, tigers that carry their cubs in a pouch, terrible walking lizards with scythes for claws. Syrio Forel has seen these things.

“On the day I am speaking of, the first sword was newly dead, and the Sealord sent for me. Many bravos had come to him, and as many had been sent away, none could say why. When I came into his presence, he was seated, and in his lap was a fat yellow cat. He told me that one of his captains had brought the beast to him, from an island beyond the sunrise. ‘Have you ever seen her like?’ he asked of me.

“And to him I said, ‘Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,’ and the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword.”

Arya screwed up her face. “I don’t understand.”

Syrio clicked his teeth together. “The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said ‘her,’ and that is what the others saw. Are you hearing?”

Arya thought about it. “You saw what was there.”

“Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth.”

- George R.R. Martin, "A Game of Thrones"

If the fossil record shows more dinosaur footprints in one period than another, it does not necessarily mean that there were more dinosaurs -- it may be that there was more mud.

Elise E. Morse-Gagné

If a process is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad process. So they can only say it's the team's fault so many times before it's not really the team's fault.

• Steve Yegge

The bulk of political discourse today is purposefully playing telephone with facts in ways that couldn't be done in the Information Age if people just had the know-how to check for themselves. Comprehending complex sentences is something that can be done by first grade, and comprehending complex concepts and issues is without a doubt something better learned in math than in English, where one learns to obfuscate concepts and issues, and to play to baser emotions. Granted, one also learns to recognize and to defend against these tactics, but it still can't hold a candle to the "mental gymnastics" referenced above. Do you realize what the world looks like if you've got a background in math? Imagine signs reading DANGER: KEEP OUT are planted everywhere, but people purposefully and proudly ignore them, treating it as laughably eccentric to have learned more than half the alphabet, approaching en masse and dragging you with them.

~From the Math It Just Bugs Me page, TV Tropes

"At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”

-Milton Friedman story

I wish there was no illness, I don't care if an old doctor starves.

Loā Hô, a Taiwanese physician and poet.

If you want to know the way nature works, we looked at it, carefully... that's the way it looks! You don't like it... go somewhere else! To another universe! Where the rules are simpler, philosophically more pleasing, more psychologically easy. I can't help it! OK! If I'm going to tell you honestly what the world looks like to the human beings who have struggled as hard as they can to understand it, I can only tell you what it looks like. And I cannot make it any simpler, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to simplify it, and I'm not going to fake it. I'm not going to tell you it's something like a ball bearing inside a spring, it isn't. So I'm going to tell you what it really is like, and if you don't like it, that's too bad.

— Richard Feynman, the QED Lectures at the University of Auckland

I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I understood what was going on and I thought I made a good rig. But I was wrong. I should have done it.

Jamie Hyneman

If you want to beat the market, you have to do something different from what everyone else is doing, and you have to be right.

David Bennett

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Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to.

-hilzoy

Rin: What are clouds? I always thought they were thoughts of the sky or something like that. Because you can't touch them.

[ . . . ]

Hisao: Clouds are water. Evaporated water. You know they say that almost all of the water in the world will at some point of its existence be a part of a cloud. Every drop of tears and blood and sweat that comes out of you, it'll be a cloud. All the water inside your body too, it goes up there some time after you die. It might take a while though.

Rin: Your explanation is better than any of mine.

Hisao: Because it's true.

Rin: That must be it.

Katawa Shoujo

The whole universe sat there, open to the man who could make the right decisions.

Frank Herbert, "Dune"

In the study of reliable processes for arriving at belief, philosophers will become technologically obsolescent. They will be replaced by cognitive and computer scientists, workers in artificial intelligence, and others.

Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality

If you haven't read this book yet, do so. It is basically LessWrongism circa 1993.

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

• Laurence J. Peter

From Space Viking, by H. Beam Piper:

"Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?"

Source:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20728/20728-h/20728-h.htm

"The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war."

--WSJ article about Navy SEALs

‎"We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself." --Chris Mooney

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke remarked that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Clarke was referring to the fantastic inventions we might discover in the future or in our travels to advanced civilizations. However, the insight also applies to self-perception. When we turn our attention to our own minds, we are faced with trying to understand an unimaginably advanced technology. We can't possibly know (let alone keep track of) the tremendous number of mechanical influences on our behavior because we inhabit an extraordinarily complicated machine. So we develop a shorthand, a belief in the causal efficacy of our conscious thoughts. We believe in the magic of our own causal agency.

• Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will

No man has wit enough to reason with a fool.

Proyas (fictional character - author: R. Scott Bakker)

If you have ten minutes unscheduled and the phone isn't ringing, what do you do? What do you start?

Seth Godin

"Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering."

-- Gary Snyder (bOING bOING #9, 1992)

I don't have a strong feeling about the accuracy of the percentage, but the general point sounds plausible.

The essence of wisdom is to remain suspicious of what you want to be true.

-Jon K. Hart

If you can't think intuitively, you may be able to verify specific factual claims, but you certainly can't think about history.

Well, maybe we can't think about history. Intuition is unreliable. Just because you want to think intelligently about something doesn't mean it's possible to do so.

Jewish Atheist, in reply to Mencius Moldbug

"Attack and absorb the data that attack produces!"

-Tylwyth Waff in Heretics of Dune

(Hi. I'm new.)

If things are nice there is probably a good reason why they are nice: and if you do not know at least one reason for this good fortune, then you still have work to do.

Richard Askey

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. - Ivan Turgenev

It's the first follower who turns the lone nut into a leader.

When shall we cross ourselves?

Whenever we are about to perform a good deed, or when we see or feel that we might commit a sin.

• Carlos Gimenez, Barrio (Context: children in a religious institution are answering catechism questions)

This sounds like a great way to prime yourself. Crossing yourself has all the wrong connotations, but a gesture meaning "I choose good." should help in general. (I like the fist-over-heart Battlestar Galactica salute.)

Having a whole set of gestures, along with pithy quotes, should prove even more effective.

Tom smiled. "Yes, Don't you like that idea?" "Liking it and having it be true aren't the same thing, Tom."

-Clive Barker, Abarat

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." ~Thomas H. Huxley

One of my favorite quotes; from the father of the word "agnostic."

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.

-- Michael Shermer

The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey. In man this art of simulation reaches its peak: here deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees "forms"; their feeling nowhere lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman's buff on the backs of things.

Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense

"There always comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two plus two equals four is punished with death … And the issue is not a matter of what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not two plus two equals four." – Albert Camus, The Plague

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

-- Kahlil Gibran

"People argue against the existence of spirits and immaterial souls because they can't be explained by science. But if by definition these things are outside the scope of science, then you can't use science to prove or disprove them."

"Do these spirits and souls actually affect anything in the real world?"

"Sure."

"Then they're within the scope of science."

"Okay, let's say they don't interact at all with the world."

"Then why do we care?!?!"

--Calamities of Nature

I see that I've quoted the following twice before within other comment threads, so I think it deserves a place here:

He who would be Pope must think of nothing else.

Usually cited as a Spanish proverb.

quoted text The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.

Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 195, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

"If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics." – Roger Bacon

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." Bertrand Russell

"When he is confronted by the necessity for a decision, even one which may be trivial from a normal standpoint, the obsessive-compulsive person will typically attempt to reach a solution by invoking some rule, principle, or external requirement which might, with some degree of plausibility, provide a "right" answer....If he can find some principle or external requirement which plausibly applies to the situation at hand, the necessity for a decision disappears as such; that is, it becomes transformed into the purely technical problem of applying the correct principle. Thus, if he can remember that it is always sensible to go to the cheapest movie, or "logical" to go to the closest, or good to go to the most educational, the problem resolves to a technical one, simply finding which is the most educational, the closest, or such. In an effort to find such requirements and principles, he will invoke morality, "logic," social custom, and propriety, the rules of "normal" behavior (especially if he is a psychiatric patient), and so on. In short he will try to figure out what he "should" do.

-David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles

We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.

• George Orwell / saw on Discovery Channel

The way to maximize outcome is to concentrate on the process.

-Seth Klarman, letter to shareholders

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

attribution unknown

I may have posted a little too fast-- I picked up the quote from a site which says it's a misquotation, and apt to be used to support dubious ideas.

On the other hand, contempt can come into play too quickly and reflexively, so I'm not deleting the quote.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Bruce Lee

I am quite prepared to be told, with regard to the cases I have here proposed, as I have already been told with regard to others, "Oh, that is an extreme case, it would never really happen!" Now I have observed that the answer is always given instantly, with perfect confidence, and without examination of the details of the proposed case. It must therefore rest on some general principle: the mental process being probably something like this — 'I have formed a theory. This case contradicts my theory. Therefore this is an extreme case, and would never occur in practice'.

-Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), relating to the possibility of strategically-induced Condorcet cycles in elections.

"Everyone thinks himself the master pattern of human nature; and by this, as on a touchstone, he tests all others. Behavior that does not square with his is false and artificial. What brutish stupidity!” -- Montaigne

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

• 1984, George Orwell (although I really shouldn't have to attribute this one)

Probably my favorite statement on rationality, it's so practical for launching off into every other sphere of thought - politics, ethics, theology, maths/physics, and, well, all else that follows.

Future possibilities will often resemble today's fiction, just as robots, spaceships, and computers resemble yesterday's fiction. How could it be otherwise? Dramatic new technologies sound like science fiction because science fiction authors, despite their frequent fantasies, aren't blind and have a professional interest in the area.

...

This may seem too good to be true, but nature (as usual) has not set her limits based on human feelings.

K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation Chapter 6

"Does it work?" is actually a much more important question than "Should it work?"

• Druin Burch, "Blood Sports: Does a popular performance-enhancing subterfuge actually work" in Natural History 6/11/2011

Teach a man to reason, and he'll think for a lifetime.

-- Phil Plait

Sorry for length, but this a nice sketch on the role of rationality in science :)

A glossary for research reports

Scientific term (Actual meaning)

It has long been known that. . . . (I haven’t bothered to look up the original reference)

. . . of great theoretical and practical importance (. . . interesting to me)

While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions . . . (The experiments didn’t work out, but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it)

The W-Pb system was chosen as especially suitable to show the predicted behaviour. . . . (The fellow in the next lab had some already made up)

High-purity || Very high purity || Extremely high purity || Super-purity || Spectroscopically pure . . . (Composition unknown except for the exaggerated claims of the supplier)

A fiducial reference line . . . (A scratch)

Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study . . . (The results on the others didn’t make sense and were ignored)

. . . accidentally strained during mounting (. . . dropped on the floor)

. . . handled with extreme care throughout the experiments (. . . not dropped on the floor)

Typical results are shown . . . (The best results are shown)

Although some detail has been lost in reproduction, it is clear from the original micrograph that . . . (It is impossible to tell from the micrograph)

Presumably at longer times . . . (I didn’t take time to find out)

The agreement with the predicted curve is excellent (fair) || good (poor) || satisfactory (doubtful) || fair (imaginary) || . . as good as could be expected (non-existent)

These results will be reported at a later date (I might possibly get around to this sometime)

The most reliable values are those of Jones (He was a student of mine)

It is suggested that || It is believed that || It may be that . . . (I think)

It is generally believed that . . . (A couple of other guys think so too)

It might be argued that . . . (I have such a good answer to this objection that I shall now raise it)

It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding . . . (I don’t understand it)

Unfortunately, a quantitative theory to account for these effects has not been formulated (Neither does anybody else)

Correct within an order of magnitude (Wrong)

It is to be hoped that this work will stimulate further work in the field (This paper isn’t very good, but neither are any of the others in this miserable subject)

Thanks are due to Joe Glotz for assistance with the experiments and to John Doe for valuable discussions (Glotz did the work and Doe explained what it meant)

C. D. Graham, Jr., Metal. Progress 71, 75 (1957) (actual source)

Math is cumulative. Even Wiles and Perelman had to stand on the lemma-encrusted shoulders of giants.

Scott Aaronson, "Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong", which is worth reading in its own right.

I'm new to LW (Well, I've been reading Eliezer's posts in order, and am somewhere in 2008 right now, but I haven't read many of the recent posts) so these may have been posted before. But quote collecting is a hobby of mine and I couldn't pass it up.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." – Albert Einstein

It’s not exactly a 'he said she said' argument. It’s a 'top experts on the subject predict significant methane emissions from melting permafrost, but some guy on my blog says they must be wrong' argument.

-- John Baez on Melting Permafrost

“It seems that those who legislate and administer and write about social policy can tolerate any increase in actual suffering so long as the system does not explicitly permit it.”

-Charles Murray

"...I thank my fortune for it,
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad."

--Antonio, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1 Scene 1. I have found this quote coming to mind recently apropos the recent Bitcoin price swings.

"Ahh, there's no such thing as mysterious."

~Strong Bad, from sbemail 140 (Probably not originally intended in a rationalist sense.)

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.” – Jean de la Bruyère

One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts.

Unsourced; attributed to Albert Einstein.

Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands - though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.

--Bernard Crick

Verberationes continuabunt dum animus melior fit. ("The beatings will continue until morale improves")

(My presentation of the quote constitutes an assertion that there is an insight here useful for navigating the world of tribal politics, hence the relevance.)

O shame to men! Devil with devil damned / Firm concord holds; men only disagree / Of creatures rational

-- Milton, Paradise Lost: not on Aumann agreement, alas

Now that's the general solution to a problem that all the programmers in the world are out there inventing for you, the general solution, and nobody has the general problem.

• Charles H. Moore

children are scum

can't we figure out a way to get rid of kids but keep the human race alive

we need to get on that shit

-- QDB, on immortalism

Faith is not enough, for faith is blind by nature. Life needs insight. It is the dead, and the dying, that allow themselves to be led.

--Eve Online: Chronicles

"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness."

--George Santayana, Quoted by Carl Sagan in Contact, Chapter 14 "Harmonic Oscillator", page 231

"For the thinker, as for the artist, what counts in life is not the number of rare and exciting adventures he encounters, but the inner depth in that life, by which something great may be made out of even the paltriest and most banal of occurrences." -- William Barrett

If a process is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad process. So they can only say it's the team's fault so many times before it's not really the team's fault.

• Steve Yegge

I argued earlier that the only circumstances under which it should be morally acceptable to impose a particular way of thinking on children, is when the result will be that later in life they come to hold beliefs that they would have chosen anyway, no matter what alternative beliefs they were exposed to. And what I am now saying is that science is the one way of thinking — maybe the only one — that passes this test. There is a fundamental asymmetry between science and everything else.

• Nicholas Humphrey, What Shall We Tell the Children?

"I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win-win solution. Shall I continue to count?" Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt 1947- 2011

From Countdown to Immortality, by FM-2030:

TIME REENTRY AND ADAPTATION

How will an individual suspended today adjust to life upon reentry in the future?

Time-reentry adjustment will not be a serious problem for the following reasons:

Anyone suspended in these years will probably not have to wait long for reanimation. In act the time will come when long-term suspension will make no sense. Deathcorrection will be quick and therefore catch-up will not be a problem.

People are living longer and longer. Therefore many of the reanimate’s friends and acquaintances will be around.

More and more people are signing up for cryonic suspension. When they are eventually brought back, they will find other reanimates from their original time zones.

What if you do not find any familiar faces upon reentry? What of it? You will make new friends. Why not start afresh? Isn’t this precisely what tends of millions of people now do when they voluntarily move from one part of the planet to another? In our fluid times many of our friendships and associations are not lifelong and continuous any way.

We humans are remarkably adaptable. In recent decades we have seen entire populations switch eons - from Stone Age to Electronic Age - from the feudal/agrarian world to the industrial and the telespheral. There is no limit to our adaptability.

Entire generations are now born into worlds of real-time acceleration. To them and to all of us rapid realignment is the norm. We are not even aware we are continually desynchronizing.

In the coming decades reanimates may not be the only ones having to readapt. Increasing numbers of people will drop out of our world and start new lives elsewhere in the solar system. Some of these extraterrestrials will come back and may also have to zone in.

In the new century we will learn about Time and Space reentry and devise catch-up skills. For example: rapid updates via onbody computers and audio/visuals - rapid playbacks and overviews via touch-and-enter holospheres - body-attached or brain-implanted decision-assists - automatic information-transfer procedures and so on. We may also have rapid genetic fine-tuning to help returnees improve their concentration - memory - adaptability - learn/unlearn.

Finally in the coming years and decades the world will grow more and more open and friendly. This very day we are outgrowing age-old adversarial barriers: tribalism - racism - classism - sexism - nationalism. The freeflow of people across the planet is speeding up. My projection is that a person suspended in the coming years and reentering decades later will at first have more problems with the relative friendliness and openness of the new century than anything else.

If Simon Baron-Cohen gets his way, a future society could make a certain high level of empathy the norm, with potentially interesting consequences for revived cryonauts.

The questioner is nothing but the answer. We are not ready to accept this because it will put an end to all the answers which we have accepted as being the real answers. u.g. Krishnamurti

More from Space Viking:

He was crucified, and crowned with a crown of thorns. Who had they done that to? Somebody long ago, on Terra.